German MP reads out anti-Erdoğan poem in parliament

A German MP from Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats on Thursday read out in parliament the satirical poem that offended Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and landed a comedian in hot water.

Backbench MP Detlef Seif said he wanted to see if Jan Böhmermann’s poem — in which he calls the Turkish president a “goat f—er” — should be classed as satire and covered by freedom of expression rules.

“A person’s honor is under attack here,” Seif told his fellow lawmakers during a debate on whether to scrap a law under which foreign heads of state cannot be insulted. Erdoğan used the obscure law to push for criminal charges against Böhmermann, who read out the poem on television on March 31. Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to Erdoğan’s request but promised to overturn the law.

Seif’s speech, which was broadcast live on television, angered some of his fellow MPs. Edelgard Bulmahn, a Social Democrat and vice president of the Bundestag, warned Seif to be careful about what he reads out and “take into account that we are in the German parliament.”

Renate Künast, a Green Party MP, said she found Seif’s speech “embarrassing.”

German MPs have immunity when speaking in the parliament, but Böhmermann took to Twitter to ask for Seif’s immunity to be lifted so he could be prosecuted under the very law that MPs were discussing getting rid of.